Lights flickered, then went out altogether across big swaths of the Tri-State area this weekend, as severe storms cut electricity to more than 75,000 residents from northern New Jersey to Long Island and parts of New York City. As heavy rain and gusty winds swept through, utility crews spent the night cutting away downed trees, swapping out damaged gear and slowly bringing neighborhoods back online.
By the numbers
The outages stacked up quickly across multiple utilities. Jersey Central Power & Light logged 32,488 customers without service, according to Jersey Central Power & Light. Overlapping territory in New Jersey, PSEG New Jersey reported about 19,406 affected accounts, while PSEG Long Island showed roughly 8,837 outages.
Closer to New York City, Con Edison listed about 6,056 customers out across the five boroughs and another 5,064 in Westchester County. To the north and west, Orange & Rockland Utilities reported roughly 4,597 outages. Taken together, those tallies add up to more than 75,000 people without power, as compiled by FOX 5 NY.
Warnings and travel advisories
Officials had been sounding the alarm ahead of the storms, telling residents to brace for sudden severe thunderstorms, heavy downpours and damaging wind gusts as a squall line pushed through the region. The New York office of the National Weather Service issued watches and advisories covering much of the Tri-State.
New York City Emergency Management added its own heads-up, putting out a travel advisory for Saturday into Sunday that urged New Yorkers to budget extra travel time, steer clear of flooded streets and sign up for alerts, according to NYC Emergency Management.
Where crews are working and what to do
Utilities are asking customers to keep their distance from any downed wires and to report outages, then track restoration through online maps and tools. PSEG Long Island's storm center highlights a 24/7 outage hotline and its MyPower Map for real-time updates, while Con Edison is directing customers to report service problems and enroll in text and app alerts.
Crews from local utilities, along with mutual-assistance teams, are focusing first on critical infrastructure and the hardest-hit neighborhoods. How fast the lights come back depends on what they find in the field, including the scope of damage and whether blocked roads slow access.
Restoration is still underway. In the meantime, officials are telling residents to keep phones charged when possible, avoid driving through flooded roadways and lean on their utility's outage map for the latest estimates. For citywide alerts, sign up for NotifyNYC and follow your utility's outage center for the quickest updates.
